


we love like carnivores (by the neck)

by anarchetypal



Category: Rooster Teeth/Achievement Hunter/Funhaus RPF
Genre: Destructive Relationships, Fake AH Crew, GTA AU, Gore, Mentions of fucking, Multi, Vignettes, Violence, immortal au, non-explicit phone sex, treating torture/interrogations sessions like it's tuesday brunch
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-31
Updated: 2017-01-31
Packaged: 2018-09-21 04:49:51
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,875
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9532169
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anarchetypal/pseuds/anarchetypal
Summary: In a darker timeline? The best of the worst eventualities? They’ll destroy each other, absolutely, no question, laughter and death and devotion.And so it’s innocent—as innocent as anything ever gets in Los Santos.I adore you and that’s why I’ll kill anyone. I adore you and that’s why I’ll kill us.





	

**Author's Note:**

> aka that compilation of the darker timeline narratives/character introspective posts/etc i've written on my blog (anarchetypal.tumblr.com), crossposted here, cleaned up, and made into a quasi series of vignettes 
> 
> they're connected in the sense that they take place in the same universe (save a couple of bonus bits), but it's not one big chronological story; they're to be enjoyed as separate pieces!

have you ever set off fireworks indoors?  
fireworks inside—that’s what loving you is like.  
  
it’s bright. searing. incandescent. it’s energy exploding out and spilling over, raw reaction too much for the chassis that tries to hold it in.  
  
it’s going to send somebody to the hospital.  
  
—e.k.t., from _in case of emergency, break down_

 

 

——

Gavin is a shark in a puppy costume.

Like the kind of aggressively charming socialite whose smile is a little too sharp, who makes you inexplicably nervous even as you’re inexorably charmed, inevitably won over.

He’s changeable. Effervescent-volatile. Aware. _Smart_. Can become a different person in an instant. Gavin will play the lovable fool, will talk in circles for hours, will give you all the empty information you could ever want, Ramsey’s cheerful stupid lapdog.

And then when the time is right, when blood’s in the water, he’ll shed the costume and he’ll grin and chew you up and spit you out.

When Geoff sends Gavin in to interrogate someone, they always think it’s a joke. When they realize it’s not (because they will, because that’s the best part, watching the dawning twisting sick horror), Gavin’s already gotten everything he needs because they’ve given it to him with a smile.

——

Meanwhile, there’s all sorts of speculation about the Vagabond. There’s just as much scoffing that Ryan is all whispered reputation with nothing to actually back it up.

The reality is that the Vagabond is, truly, the bump in the night all the fairy tales warn you about.  
  
But there are things the stories don’t prepare you for.  
  
Like that the Vagabond is patient. He’ll spend hours and hours and hours torturing someone without showing a hint of exhaustion. He’ll wait, motionless, for as long as he needs to so he can strike a target at the perfect moment. Ray won’t breathe when he’s looking through his scope, but Ryan can go still as stone, still as a hot summer day just before the storm hits.  
  
And the Vagabond doesn’t threaten. Not really. There’s no real reason, he figures, to prepare someone for what you don’t really plan to do. Gavin can promise you the world and take it all away again in a second, but Ryan _acts_ , gets creative with it, leaves people choking on their own blood and talking fueled purely on fear, because that’s the real motivator, that’s the primal, instinctive thing that works every time, _god, please god just don’t kill me_. Ryan likes to joke that Gavin has to say a thousand words to get someone to do what he wants and Ryan doesn’t have to say anything at all.  
  
The Vagabond is graceful. Jeremy can drop in on a target like a cat and crush their ribs into their soft, vulnerable lungs in a couple of smooth, cadenced motions, but he wonders if it’s appropriate to compare gunfights to art, to dance—Ryan moves like death on stage, like it’s effortless, dodges bullets with laughter that chills bones and sends hardened gang members running.  
  
And sometimes Geoff can’t tell whether the Vagabond is a friend to the crew or its worst enemy, but there’s something to be said about the way Ryan razes a city if anything happens to one of them.  
  
So there’s truth to the speculation. But Ryan is terrifying because the speculation doesn’t come _anywhere close_ to covering it.

——

Geoff grew up harsh. Grew up all Southern Alabama hard lessons learned, first shot a gun at age eleven, breaks free of Alabama in a bloody thunderstorm getaway at nineteen and never does look back.

He travels. Grows. Ends up in Los Santos when he’s still young, but he’s learned things: to network. Steal. Pickpocket. Kill a man, not cleanly, not yet.

And so he’s young and he’s trying and he’s learning new things every day while he makes a living for himself: food first, then shelter, then learning to wield a bigger gun and a knife and a crowbar and anything, everything becomes a weapon. Which is useful. Which is good. Which is just common sense.

He meets Jack and their anthesis is bloody.

She is so competent and so deadly and so _good_ —Geoff is lost, endlessly. Geoff is found.

He learns. Grows.

He raises a crew, is the point, and he gets drunk and kills a dozen men, points ambiguously at anything, says _blow it up_ and watches it happen and laughs. Gets drunk on power and wields it in terrifying ways, but at the end of the day, it’s all for _fun_.

——

Jack is all about contingency plans. Geoff has a Plan A and occasionally a Plan B, but Jack? She’s got Plan A through Z and knows them all like the back of her hand, can switch gears in the space between one heartbeat and the next. Jack is the Queen of Equanimity. If you’re panicking, that means the other side has already won—and Jack is a _viciously_ sore loser.

So she doesn’t panic. And it works, because she can play any role. Jack of all trades, master of—well, honestly, master of most of them. She can be the hitter, the mastermind, the monkey, the honeypot. Knows seven languages and seventy different accents and can make a weapon out of virtually anything.

Also, the thing is, where Ray and Ryan like to, well, play with their food, Jack gets her kicks elsewhere.

Jack isn’t going to spend four hours working over a single person for information. To her, everyone is expendable. Every loss is an acceptable loss. And you better believe she isn’t going to waste her time playing mind games and posturing.

Michael remembers finally getting fed up with trying to pry information from a couple of moles in their syndicate one time, and so he’d called in Jack.

And Jack enters, high heels clicking and echoing through the warehouse. When she comes to a stop, she says nothing, just takes in the two men bound to cheap chairs next to each other.

And finally she sighs like she’s been presented with a couple of obnoxious, misbehaving children. She turns to the guy on the left and very calmly says, “I need the names of everyone you sold our info to.”

But of course the guy just snorts and rolls his eyes and says nothing save a disparaging comment under his breath.

Jack shrugs. “Alright,” she says, and takes four steps to the side to pick up a heavy baseball bat, riddled with nails, from a pile of weapons.

It happens in a fraction of a second.

The guy opens his mouth with a sneer, but then Jack takes a hard swing and slams the bat into the side of his head, crushing his skull like a soda can and sending blood and unidentifiable bits splattering all over the other man, who promptly pitches forward and dry heaves with a choking sound.

“I need the names of everyone you sold our info to,” Jack repeats as she tightens her grip on the bat, just as calm, this time to the guy on the right. Blood is pooling on the concrete floor. The guy immediately starts spitting out names with a voice that shakes so hard it’s nearly incomprehensible.

Jack smiles sweetly. “Great. that wasn’t so hard, now, was is it?” she asks, so patronizing it makes the man flinch. Then she hefts the bat again to give him a dented skull to match his friend’s, heedless of his begging, his desperate sobbing.

And none of this is to say that Jack doesn’t have fun. The whole crew plays. The whole crew is made up of a bunch of dramatic flairs personified.

Meaning jack has a special form of execution called “terminal velocity” and it mostly involves taking someone to the highest altitude possible and throwing them out of the helicopter without a parachute.

She maintains it’s basically just performance art. There’s something poignant about terrified screams being snatched away by wind and gravity.

——

Ryan and Ray blossom under one another’s influence, of course they do, the stark contrast of their personalities colliding, somehow, just well enough to pull something darker and more efficient and more frightening from the wreckage.

How it starts is: Geoff sends Ryan out to get info from some guy and pushes Ray out the door with him to give him some backup, probably because Jack and Michael are out of town or busy.

And Ryan stares at Ray, all skinny 5′9’’ of him, bundled in a hoodie and texting, and gives Geoff an _are you fucking kidding me right now_ kind of look, but Geoff just waves them off and shuts the door in their faces.

So Ryan’s not expecting much, and sure enough, Ray doesn’t even approach the guy when they’ve got him, just wanders to the worktable in the warehouse where all the tools are and pushes a bunch of knives out of the way, pulls a DS from his hoodie while Ryan works the guy over where he’s tied to a chair.

It’s only when the guy’s spitting blood that he sees Ray finally pull a face and shift on the table, and for a second Ryan thinks, great, he’s gonna be one of the squeamish ones. “Oh my _god_ ,” Ray calls out, and Ryan’s hit with a disappointed sort of knowing satisfaction—

But then, “How fucking long is this going to _take_ ,” Ray continues, tone equal parts bored and impatient.

The guy spits out another mouthful of blood and sneers at him. ”Is this some kind of fucking joke?” he asks, laughing. Ray doesn’t even look up, legs swinging while he works at the buttons on his DS. “Is Ramsey hiring kids now? Is this supposed to _scare_ me?”

And Ryan scowls, steps forward, but before he has a chance to do anything there’s a glint of metal flashing past him, followed immediately by a broken, choked howl of pain, and suddenly there’s a knife embedded neatly in the muscles of the guy’s shoulder.

He glances back and raises an eyebrow at Ray, who’s frowning down at his DS. “Fucking great,” Ray mutters, like he hasn’t just maimed a man. “I’m gonna run out of battery.” He looks up at Ryan. “Can we hurry this up, dude?” he asks, and he hasn’t spared a single glance at the guy, who’s trembling a little now in a way that all of Ryan’s tricks hadn’t been able to provoke.

And _Oh_ , Ryan thinks, watching Ray with new eyes, suddenly. _Oh_.

_I can work with that._

——

And so you know those shitheads have torture/interrogation sessions worked down to a science.

Obviously with Ryan masked up and looming and seriously intending to put the fear of god in people with knives and fists and carefully-worded threats to cut right to the center of them, he gets the reactions he wants, and it’s scary, it works.

But _Ray_ —

Ray’s fucking _terrifying_ because he’s not trying to be. Casually dangerous. Ryan has a little bit of a flair for the dramatic and it totally works, but then there’s this kid sitting on a worktable twirling a DS stylus, and he looks bored and he looks ostensibly harmless and he’s so casual about it, like this is just an average Tuesday and it’s so unsettling it makes their victims shiver.

He’s not going come at them with a knife or put a gun to their head, because he doesn’t have to.

Everyone thinks it’s Ryan who comes up with the really messed up shit because it’s Ryan but real talk, it’s Ray—sitting in the old warehouse on a table next to a bunch of weapons with his legs hanging off the side, one checkerboard van untied, laces barely brushing the floor, head bowed down towards the DS he’s giving one hundred percent of his attention to despite the fact that Ryan’s masked up and armed to the teeth right next to him, despite the guy tied up and bleeding and not giving up information—

It’s Ray. It’s this unassuming, uncaring kid who frowns down at his DS screen and says casually, without glancing up, “Look, if he’s not gonna give us the info we need, what good is his fucking tongue, anyway?”

And Ryan looks up and smiles.

And Ray tosses him a knife without pausing his game.

And once it’s done, once the screams have stopped, Ryan peels the bloodied gloves from his hands. He saunters over to the table and kneels down, and he ties Ray’s shoe for him while Ray finally finishes the level he’s on, the picture perfect image of cutesy domesticity.

Once it’s done, Ray hops down off the table and grins at Ryan beatifically and reaches down to wipe a streak of blood from Ryan’s jaw as he asks if they can stop for fast food on the way home.

And so he and Ryan work together flawlessly, play off each other perfectly— “I dunno, cut his thumbs off,” he offers one time, nonchalant, and Ryan doesn’t even hesitate, like there’s just this total call-response between them and they’re so juxtaposed, this stark contrast of their personalities and the way they approach situations, but one will fuck you up just as thoroughly as the other.

Ryan’s questioning some random person in a warehouse in the middle of the night, and the guy is refusing to cooperate, and eventually Ryan snaps at him to start talking (or, presumably, die)—

And then there’s laughter, and there’s Ray, sitting on the table with his legs swinging. “Oh, man,” he murmurs, grinning. “Trust me, you’re gonna want to do what he says.”

——

Ray calls ryan in the middle of the night and just greets him with “Yo, get your dick out, we’re having phone sex.”

There’s a pause, and Ray hears some shuffling around on the other line before Ryan says conversationally, “I keep waiting for the day you start a conversation with _hello_ , or _how are you_ , or even–”

“Phone sex,” Ray says again, never to be distracted, and he’s already got Ryan on speaker, both hands occupied.

And so phone sex happens, and it’s _filthy_ , just like the most unapologetic kinky shit ever because real talk, Ryan’s got a mouth like _sin_ , and it doesn’t take long before Ray’s choking himself with one hand and coming hard over the other.

While he’s sprawled out in bed catching his breath, he hears little noises on the other line, and at first he thinks it’s Ryan jacking off, but then–

“ _Dude_ ,” he says suddenly, exasperated, “did you just have phone sex with me during a torture-interrogation sesh?” Because those are almost certainly muffled fear-whimpers in the background.

There’s another pause, longer this time, and then, “Yes,” Ryan says slowly, with his _it seems like this is something I should be sheepish about, therefore I will fake it_ tone of voice. Ray lets his head fall back against the pillows and shuts his eyes. “You alright?” Ryan asks, politely enough.

“Trying to decide whether or not that’s hot,” Ray admits.

“What’s the consensus?”

“Yeah, I dunno, my brain and my dick are saying two totally different things right now. We’ll get back to you.”

——

Sometimes, they play this game.

Ray, privately, calls it Pedestrian Pot Shot.

How it works is: they go to the tallest rooftop in the area, and Ray gets out his sniper rifle, and then he has twenty seconds to look down at the street below, at people walking, or sitting at the bus stop, or leaning up against buildings.

Then Ryan puts his hands over Ray’s eyes.

And Ray gets one shot to hit a pedestrian.

How the points work is: he gets ten points for hitting somebody sitting or standing still, and thirty points for hitting somebody who’s moving, and Ryan gets twenty points if Ray misses. Whoever has the most points at the end of the month wins.

So Ray’s looking down at Alta Street from fifteen stories up with the seconds ticking by in the back of his mind, eyes roaming—dark streets lit by neon, lit by yellowing street lamps, store front windows, car headlights, cigarette cherries bouncing down the sidewalk, held between fingers and lips, crushed under five hundred dollar shoes. People walking, bundled in coats, spread out few and far between because it’s late and it’s cold.

Twenty seconds means darkness. Means glasses plucked from his face, means Ryan’s hands from behind, warm, covering his eyes.

Ray lifts his gun, brow furrowed, thinking. Remembering. He aims at what he can’t see—listens, like he can hear the footsteps of the man who should be approaching the crosswalk—

—now.

Ray fires. Ryan keeps his hands where they are longer than he needs to and Ray leans back against him. Distant, horrified screams float up fifteen stories. Still blind, Ray grins.

“He’s not dead,” Ryan says calmly. Ray can’t tell if he’s disappointed or not.

“Rules don’t say he needs to be dead.”

“Rules don’t say he needs to be _alive_.”

"Thirty points,” Ray says firmly, because he invented the game, he makes the rules, and this month he wins. He puts the gun down, puts his hands over Ryan’s, and pulls them away from his eyes. “But let’s put him out of his misery anyway.”

——

Ray knows the guy they’re interrogating has vital information, is the thing. The guy is the only person in the city, in fact, who can give them the names and locations they need. The guy is Not Expendable. Ray knows that.

But then Ryan goes down.

Ryan goes down, and Ray doesn’t think about how the guy isn’t expendable, how Geoff is going to throw a fit if they don’t get the info they need. He doesn’t think much at all.

What he does do is put a bullet clean between the guy’s eyes before Ryan’s blood even starts pooling on the concrete.

For a moment, Ray can’t pull his eyes away from the body.

Generally Ryan’s the one who does the heavy lifting, the visceral shit, but there’s a nearly scalding heat somewhere in the center of Ray’s chest now that’s radiating out so hard he’s surprised the air doesn’t catch fire. He wishes the guy were alive just to kill him again, to draw out the process—Ray wants to rip the guy’s heart out of his chest. Wants to tear into his stomach, send his insides spilling out onto the concrete. Wants to do the damage himself. Inflict with his own hands.

But there’s a quiet groan from Ryan, and Ray lets the fire burn out, overtaken immediately by an electric strike of fear. “Ryan,” he says as he moves to kneel beside him, and he’s proud of the way his voice stays even. He can’t see much past the blood. “ _Ryan_.”

“Stop looking at me like I’m going to die,” Ryan grates out as he struggles to sit up, and Ray’s breath leaves him in a shaky exhale. Hands pressed tight against the wound on his head, Ryan raises an eyebrow at the body. “You killed him?”

Ray’s distracted, trying to get a look at Ryan’s head. “Shut up. Move your fucking hands, asshole.”

“We needed him.”

“He doesn’t get to touch you and live,” Ray snaps, and he’s surprised by the ice in his voice, by the way his hands twitch for a weapon, twitch with the desire to tear into another living person.

Ryan looks at him curiously for a moment. Then he smiles. “Oh.”

That’s enough to make Ray’s hackles raise defensively. “ _What_.”

“I always knew you were a romantic,” Ryan says, a little smugly.

Ray stares, incredulous. “Are you serious? _Romantic?_ Do you have a concussion or something?”

“It was a sweet gesture.”

“Oh my fucking _god_ , I’m leaving you here to bleed out.”

——

Ryan’s lost count of the number of times he’s seen Ray fall asleep in the middle of the day–during heist planning and stakeouts and _car chases_ , sometimes, it’s incredible and incredibly infuriating.

Maybe that’s because Ryan is hardly able to sleep during _normal_ circumstances.

And maybe it’s the frustration that makes him snap at Ray after shaking him awake one afternoon while they’re sitting on a rooftop staking out a heist location. _How can you sleep right now?_

Ray just waves him off, rubs the back of his neck and turns away. “I’m tired, man, what can I say?”

“Fucking sleep at night, then,” Ryan huffs out.  And then he falters, because there’s something familiar in the way Ray smiles bitterly.

For a moment, he doesn’t say anything, just looks at Ryan. Then he huffs out a hollow laugh, shrugs. “I can’t,” he says quietly.

Ryan’s a little taken aback by the honesty. “Why?” he asks after a moment.

Ray keeps staring him down, makes Ryan feel trapped like pinned butterflies. “Same reason you can’t, probably.”

And Ryan doesn’t nod, doesn’t ask Ray if he stares at his own hands at night, shivers at the blood on them, chews his fingers to hide the tremor in them, wonders how he’s going to go out and who he’s going to take with him.

“Go back to sleep,” he says instead.

——

Bonus: Alternate Ray/Ryan origins story

 

Things go south hard during one heist, and all signs are pointing to Ryan as the one who tipped off the police, tipped off other gangs, sabotaged the guns and explosives, and everyone’s hurt and Ryan’s not talking and, shit, Geoff doesn’t wanna do this, but somebody’s gotta get some information out of him.

And so, “Ray,” Geoff says, expression peculiar. “You’re up.”

and Ryan can’t help the disbelieving snort that leaves him. Because, okay, sure, Ray’s tagged along to a few of Ryan’s torture/interrogation sessions before. Maybe he’s even paid attention once or twice.

But Ray keeps himself as far away from the action as possible, and Ray could get blown over by a stiff wind, and Ray got a paper cut last week and complained for three straight hours, so. Ryan’s not particularly concerned.

And true to form, Ray approaches the chair Ryan’s tied to, and he’s got his shoulders hunched and his hands stuffed into the pockets of his hoodie and he looks cagey, wide-eyed, looks everywhere but at Ryan.

“Hey, so, this is awkward,” Ray says hoarsely, a panicked little laugh escaping him. He pauses, shifting from foot to foot. Ryan says nothing. Eventually, the silence seems to get to him, and he bursts out, “I can’t— I can’t fucking do this, man. What the fuck is Geoff expecting me to _do?_ Ask real nice if you fucked us over? Hope you’ll tell the truth? _Fuck_ , dude.”

Ryan rolls his eyes a little bit and relaxes, settles back in the chair as best he can, figures he’ll get comfortable and just wait until Ray gives up and slinks off to send someone else in.

But the second he lets the tension drop from his shoulders, Ray moves.

The knife seems to be magicked from nowhere, blade flashing in Ray’s clever gaming fingers one second and sinking into Ryan’s leg the next. Ryan chokes on a scream and twists hard in the ropes, can’t keep his composure or find it again because he can’t grab a thought and hold onto it to find his focus, reduced to blind sensation. Action and reaction. Pure shock.

“Here’s how this is gonna go,” Ray says conversationally. Ryan’s still reeling, lost in the pain and a slow, rolling wave of terror he can’t fight off, and—

He’s scared. He’s scared. Oh. That’s new.

Ryan hears the crack of skin against skin before he registers new pain or his head snapping to one side. “Hey,” Ray says louder, grabbing Ryan’s chin. He sounds relaxed. Cheerful. “Ryan. Baby. Are you paying attention?”

It takes a moment for Ryan to nod, dazed and thrown off and scrambling to pull himself together. He hears his own blood drip through his jeans onto the concrete of the warehouse in heavy, thick spatters. It takes a moment longer to realize Ray’s finally looking at him, except—not. Ray’s looking at him, but not _at_ him. Through him. Straight through him. And Ryan can tell, he _knows_ , because he does the same fucking thing every time he interrogates someone.

He realizes with a sick, twisting rush that Ray has been paying more attention to his sessions than he’d thought.

“Here’s how this is gonna go,” Ray says again, softer, gazing straight through Ryan like he’s nothing, like he isn’t there at all. “I’m going to ask you some questions. And you’re going to talk.”

And Ryan does. Eventually, inevitably, he does.

——

The thing about Team Nice Dynamite is that Michael–-

Well, sure, he’s explosive; Michael is fire and Michael is _all cards on the table_ , wears everything on his sleeve, can become blind and lost to his emotions. Michael is four thousand pounds per square inch of pure destruction, _put everything you’ve got into one hit_ , but—

But Michael’s also rational. He knows when it’s time to fight and when it’s time to put the brass knuckles away. He knows when blowing up a building is a good strategy and when it’s just dangerous. He knows how to pick and choose what to get himself into when it comes down to it, fury-fueled decimation notwithstanding.

But take one rational-Michael and add one devious-Gavin and you’re working with a new monster entirely.

Because Michael? Michael _adores_ Gavin. Michael will shout his fool head off at Gavin and have a smile on his face while he does it. Michael gives Gavin what he wants, heedless of innocent bystanders, of his own safety, of his own _crew_.

Gavin’s clever and Michael’s ruthless and they’re both in it for the fun of it in the end, past the money and the power and the infamy. And so they tear at the city, at each other, grinning like it’s a children’s game, like they don’t realize they’re staring at beautiful, terrifying death.

So if gavin casually decides it’d be cool to take a minigun to a whole squadron of LSPD’s finest, or bring a grenade launcher to a street of busy shops and let loose—just to see what happens, because he’s curious, because he’s _bored_ –

Michael will grin and grab his weapon, fire and delight and death in his eyes, and sling an arm over Gavin’s shoulders and ask him where to start, because they’re fucking _invincible_ , because what could possibly kill them when they’ve got each other?

Team Nice Dynamite will probably destroy the city in any universe, but in a darker timeline? The best of the worst eventualities? They’ll destroy each other, absolutely, no question, laughter and death and devotion.

And so it’s innocent—as innocent as anything ever gets in Los Santos. _I adore you and that’s why I’ll kill anyone. I adore you and that’s why I’ll kill us_.

——

For all their differences, for all the varied things they bring to the crew, Jeremy and Gavin have the incredible ability to charm their way into the hearts and minds of everyone they meet—

For better or worse.

And there are multiple ways they use this—Gavin can charm his way into all manners of confidential places, and Jeremy has ties with dozens of gangs in Los Santos—but the real fun, the delicious, wonderful, terrifying play? That comes during interrogations. Ray and Ryan know their way around torture, but Jeremy and Gavin’s methods come down to simple words in the end, a game of Good Cop/Bad Cop.

Except they’re _both_ good cop, and they’re both bad cop, and they change at the drop of a hat until the poor rival gang member they’re questioning is confused and desperate and willing to tell them anything, everything.

They go with the obvious at first: stoic, tough-looking Jeremy as the bad cop, and sweet-talking, ostensibly unintimidating Gavin as good cop.

Gavin lets Jeremy rough the guy up and then he’s all smiles, pulls Jeremy away and talks to the guy gently, _Just want to help you, love, don’t want to see anyone get hurt_ , and then the second the guy starts to open up, Gavin yanks the carpet out from under him with an abattoir smile, starts spitting out all the information they have on the guy, every family member of his they wouldn’t hesitate to tear through.

When the guy is shaking, Jeremy carefully pulls Gavin back, regards the guy openly, eyes earnest, palms up. _So...let’s see what we can do for you, huh?_

Gavin laughs as they leave the cold, dark room, and Jeremy grabs him by the waist, slings him up against the wall hard enough to bruise. Presses in close, murmurs in his ear, “And the oscar goes to…”

Gavin doesn’t stop laughing, not even as he feels his skin reddening, rising. “Flatterer,” he says, reaching up and cupping the back of Jeremy’s neck, digging his nails into the skin until Jeremy winces, and only then does Gavin haul him up to kiss him hard. “ _Filthy_ flatterer.”

——

They’ve been fooling around for a few months when, inevitably, it comes up. Michael likes to think it’s a normal enough conversation between guys, whether or not they’re actually fucking each other. Boys will be boys, after all.

“I was seventeen, my first time,” Michael offers. He and Ray are sitting side-by-side on Michael’s small, shitty couch, playing video games in Michael’s small, shitty apartment in Liberty City, the only thing he can really afford on his own. For now.

(For now, meaning Michael’s got plans. Plans that include packing a bag, and stealing a car, and traveling to the west coast, and Ray. Always Ray.)

“I was seventeen,” Michael says, “And he was _loud_. Those late-night shows don’t prepare you for how fucking obnoxiously loud some people are, you know? And we were behind the chemistry building, wasn’t even dark yet, like we could’ve gotten caught and he was basically _screaming_. And you wouldn’t’ve guessed it by looking at him. He was this big, tough, macho jock. Dude probably would’ve given me shit in school, except—”

“Except he could tell,” Ray puts in without looking away from the television, like he knows from experience. “People in school can always tell.”

Michael grins. “That one little detail. Like I ever tried to fucking hide what I liked.”

“Assholes either give you shit twice as hard or totally avoid you. Like it’s something you can catch if you get too close,” Ray snorts.

Michael laughs, sing-songs, “ _Circle-circle, dot-dot, now I have my cootie shot—_ ”

“I was fourteen.”

Michael throws his controller down. “Bullshit,” he says, delighted. “Really? Ray’s a fucking baller?”

“I mean,” Ray allows, “I didn’t totally know what the fuck I was doing. Brought him up to the roof of that building by the middle school, ‘cause I knew we could be alone there.”

“And?”

Ray’s grin is a mouthful of broken glass, of little knives hidden in secret places. “And then I pushed him off.”

Somebody told Michael once that you never forget your first time. (Maybe it was Ray.) And he hasn’t, couldn’t tell you the name of that kid from high school but remembers the way he screamed, remembers the give of his skin as Michael dragged a knife across his throat like a bow across the strings of some kid’s violin in orchestra class, because he’d read somewhere that doing it that way was supposed to make the whole process silent.

He’d had a lot to learn back then.

And so he hasn’t forgotten his first time, but they’ve gone through so many people, him and Ray, that it’s impossible to keep track now. And they’ve worked flawlessly together from the beginning, breathe in tandem, his sense of spatial awareness starting and ending with Ray, then and now and until they kick it doing something stupid and reckless for not enough cash.

They’re so enmeshed into one another’s spaces that people call them a redundancy, a tautology, but Ray’s never been anything but vital to him, the cool quiet to soothe his fire, to pull him back away from the brink—and so it’s funny, it really fucking is, that Ray’s first time ended with a push.

“Gravity basically does the work for you there, though, right?” Michael says, just to watch a flicker of a scowl flash across Ray’s face, anger always easy to miss in him if you don’t know what you’re looking for. “I mean, that’s pretty much just third base.”

“Doesn’t make you any less _dead_ ,” Ray says, and Michael lives for this, the moments where Ray looks like he can’t decide whether he wants to kill Michael or kiss him or neither. The moments where Michael can’t decide whether he wants Ray to kiss him or kill him or both.

Boys will be boys.

(Michael’s got plans. Life or death, they’re always going to include Ray.)

——

It’s pretty much fact that’s Ray’s got the steadiest hands in the crew, for obvious reasons.

And it comes in handy during rough heists where everybody’s shouting and an explosion rocks the street every fifteen seconds; Ray just breathes and rolls his shoulders and doesn’t miss a shot no matter how hectic things get.

But (because of course there’s a “but”) when he and Michael finally stop dancing around their feelings for each other and get together, it’s—well, it feels _right_ , plain and simple, like this has been endgame since the moment they met, like they’ve been headed towards this like a long drive home and they’ve finally pulled into the garage, comfortable and familiar.

No one’s surprised, because of course they’re not, because they’ve been watching Ray and Michael interact for years now, have seen their easy push-pull way of existing around one another, tactile and comfortable and unabashedly in each other’s pockets.

During their next heist, Ray’s up on a roof giving cover while everything goes to hell beneath him. Which is fine, is almost par for the course for them at this point, except then Michael gets swallowed up in a blinding, hot explosion.

And Ray waits, like he usually does when this happens, counts out the one-two-three-four-five seconds it takes for the dust to clear a little and for him to see Michael running, hear the bright, chaotic laughter in his earpiece.

But it doesn’t come.

For a few moments, all Ray can hear is the rushing of blood in his ears and then, distantly, Geoff shouting for cover, Ray, we need cover now—so he lifts his gun on autopilot and starts shooting, and it actually takes him a minute to realize he’s _missing_.

He looks down at his gun first, like _what the fuck is wrong with this piece of shit_ , and that’s when he notices that his hands are shaking hard. He makes tight fists and shakes out his hands but his fingers won’t stop trembling, not for anything.

They make it out of the city by the skin of their teeth (and through no help from Ray, who can barely get his hands to still long enough to get down off the roof). Michael’s fine, banged up but fine, and as they ride out of the city Michael presses against him in the backseat, and Ray’s still cold with relief and won’t stop staring down at his hands in his lap

Michael waits until they’re at the safehouse before he grabs Ray by the shoulders and shakes him, says, “I’m not going anywhere, okay?”

And in a rare moment of anger Ray pushes him away, because _How can you promise that? You can’t. You can’t fucking promise shit._

But Michael just pulls Ray in and hugs him hard, hugs him like a reminder, like a pact, says, “Ray. I’m not going _anywhere_ , not without you. Nowhere without you, okay, not ever.”

And it’s morbid, maybe, but Ray clings to that, the idea that they’d only go down together, lets out a breath and forces himself to _believe_ that, fists his hands into the back of Michael’s shirt and they sway there, standing in the quiet back room of the safehouse.

(And a few weeks later they’re back at it, tires screaming on pavement and guns and explosions, and Ray’s hands are steady as ever.)

——

Michael plays the lone wolf because he’s dealt with crew bosses before, okay, he knows what they’re like and he’s not interested in taking orders from any smug asshole who’s got his fingers in too many pies, who’s gonna see him only as a pawn, who’s five minutes and a bad decision away from watching everything they’ve worked towards crumble, because crew standing and crew power is fickle as anything in Los Santos.

And so Michael doesn’t join crews, and Michael keeps to himself, and Michael’s a lone wolf until he’s—not, suddenly.

Because Geoff does that to people. And Geoff doesn’t push him an inch farther than he’s capable of going. And Geoff knows, somehow, just what he’s capable of. And Geoff tastes like expensive booze and cheap booze and long nights and early mornings and certainty.

And Geoff feels like home.

And then Geoff looks at Michael and doesn’t know how not to smile, feels twenty again, feels a hundred and ten, watches the kid bounce around like an excitable puppy and watches him light the world on fire.

And Geoff looks at Michael and wishes that people in their business weren’t prone to dying young.

And Geoff knows Michael would throw himself off a building for him in a second, and that’s terrifying, and it’s a rush, And Michael knows Geoff would throw all his power away for him without hesitating, and that’s terrifying, and it’s a rush.

They’re basically Los Santos’s biggest, brightest power couple, and it’s wonderful and sad and violent and amazing. And like the biggest, brightest stars, they’ll supernova early and draw the whole city into the black hole fallout of their brief, fleeting, blink-and-you’ll-miss-it cataclysm, because Los Santos crushes everything beautiful in the end—

But, God, it’s worth it. It’s worth it.

——

Imagine calculating, ruthless crime boss Geoff and veritable attack dog Ryan who will kill on command but will never, ever be tamed—imagine them together, paranoid and manic and buzzing with the bloodlust energy of Los Santos always.

They work together flawlessly on paper, but in reality they’re constantly circling each other, always this push-pull rhythm of an unspoken battle, because Ryan will follow orders to a point but he won’t roll over, and Geoff will negotiate and give Ryan some leeway but he won’t be undermined.

The first time they fuck and every time after that it’s rough, teeth and nails and throwing their weight around, all _mutually-assured destruction_ , all _let’s have a violent, destructive relationship, let’s find out how dangerous we really are_.

They’ve tried to kill each other over money or power or paranoia (tried to kill each other, over stupid shit like who gets the last beer, because they’re both always cranked up to eleven and just waiting for an excuse to fuck or fight or kill), and there’s constantly a door slamming, an I’m done, a get out of my sight, a you’re lucky you landed in the hospital and not the morgue.

They come back together every time, an unstoppable-force-immovable-object cataclysm that shakes Los Santos to its core.

——

Bonus: Immortal AU, Crew + Joel Heyman

 

There’s a commodity in every single concept on the planet.

Geoff’s Fake AH Crew, that started as an idea, molded into a gang, formed into a crew, compiled into a syndicate, organized into an empire. Warped and twisted, in the end, into a child’s game.

Okay.

The game, that’s something Joel can work with. The game, that’s something that can be broken down into its basic parts and scrapped for betting cash.

One rock plus one hard place and an infinite number of deaths turns Geoff’s Fake AH Crew, inevitably, into a horse race. A Battle Royale. A casino scheme.

“You bet on me,” Gavin says breathlessly when he crashes into Joel, gold in his necklace and his sunglasses and his eyes, blood on his hands (metaphorical) and on his shirt (real). “Oh, you _bet_ on me. That’s lovely.”

“And _lost_ ,” Joel says, annoyed, still grasping at the lapels of Gavin’s impeccably tailored outfit. “I bet on you and I fucking _lost_ , Gavin, are you not listening—”

“No, _oi_ , you cheeky—” Gavin looks delighted, grabbing at Joel’s tie, dislodging the carefully-selected pin. “You really thought I’d _live_ , didn’t you? That’s _incredibly_ flattering. How much will you lose, then?”

“One hundred _fucking_ thousand fucking _dollars_ , Gavin!” Joel snaps, but Gavin’s always in every bit of personal space Joel has ever possessed, and now Gavin’s kissing him, blood in his mouth and blood on the floor, bleeding out in his arms like some harlequin romance novel cover.

“ _Wonderful_ ,” Gavin breathes into his mouth, like it’s nothing, like the money isn’t even the point, and he dies with his hands inside Joel’s coat, fingers curled around Joel’s concealed blackjack.

In the end, Joel decides he breaks even.


End file.
